Meetup Presentation

Recently, Dayna was our special guest at the San Mateo B2B Bloggers Meetup. If you’re a Bay Area B2B blogger, come join us! Dayna did a presentation on “Blogging for Lead Generation.” Here are five tips from Dayna’s presentation. Apply them to take your B2B blog to the next level.

1) Use Well-Placed Calls to Action (CTA) for Conversion

B2B blogs exist to drive revenue. With revenue as the end goal, conversions are important steps along the way. Examples of conversions:

Opting in to an email newsletter

Completing a form to download an eBook

Requesting pricing

Requesting a product demonstration

B2B marketers: use well-placed calls-to-action on your blog. Fixed elements (e.g. the sidebar) are important, as are custom inserts related to the post. For example, when writing about marketing automation, include a well-placed offer to your latest marketing automation eBook.

2) Yes, Social Sharing Buttons. But Wait, There’s More

You don’t need to be convinced about adding social sharing buttons to your blog. But consider these additional tips from Dayna:

Include share counts, as it’s a form of social proof. The post (above) was shared 54 + 24 + 166 = 244 times. That makes it 244x times more likely to gain another share. On the EverString blog, Dayna saw a measurable increase in shares once she started showing the share counts.

To complement the share buttons, give readers pre-canned tweets (with custom text) that they can choose to share. Dayna showed an example that’s used on the Marketo blog:

If users read something useful in your post and then are presented with a related “Tweet this!”, they’ll be inclined to share that useful nugget with their followers.

3) Encourage Your Colleagues to Blog

Dayna created programs at Marketo and EverString to encourage employees to publish blog posts. The keys to success are: executive support, an incentive program, training, communications and 1:1 coaching.

The benefits? You’ll have a wider variety of perspectives on your blog. Who knows more about your products than the product managers, engineers and support personnel who deliver them?

You’ll enable the experts in your organization to gain thought leadership. And finally, it’s highly cost efficient. The investment in swag and prizes is low compared to what you’d pay (externally) to have the same content created for you.

Here are elements of Marketo’s program:

4) Vary Your Content Types and Formats

Dayna referenced an infographic from Jason Miller (@JasonMillerCA) of LinkedIn. Titled “The Blogging Food Groups: A Well-Balanced Diet of Content,” Jason recommends a hearty mix of whole wheat and grains, vegetables, meats and more. In other words: you B2B blog can’t have just a single food group (e.g. meat).

Along those lines, Dayna noted the success she had with an interactive quiz: “Who is Your Marketing Spirit Celebrity?” This light and fun piece counts as a dessert in Jason’s food groups. Dayna saw it generate a high amount of traffic and social shares. She used a free online quiz tool called Qzzr.

5) Metrics, Metrics, Metrics. In Other Words, “Is This Working?”

As I noted earlier, the goal of a B2B blog is to drive revenue. To understand how you’re measuring up to that goal, you need to look at metrics. Dayna reviews data from Google Analytics, marketing automation and CRM. She also looks at blog engagement. If one post received 3x the engagement than others, she likes to understand why. Dayna uses a paid tool that compares shares on her blog with those of her competitors. Currently, her blog is tracking favorably with her competitors’ blogs.

Attend Our Next Meetup

The San Mateo B2B Bloggers Meetup gets together once a month in San Mateo. You may recognize the presenter for our November Meetup:

Join us on Wednesday (11/4/15) at the DNN office in San Mateo (155 Bovet Road, Suite 201). The Meetup is free to attend and we’ll be providing pizza.